I may be stupid, but I am not alone. In fact I like the company.
I was surprised to find the cable was delivered yesterday (only ordered it Thursday last week). The manual was something less than I expected. First I made up the interconnects and installed them. I was relieved that the cable did not sound like Cat5 at all. My immediate impressions were that the cable was a "contender". No bloat, wonderfully natural, very large soundstage (particularly depth), exquisite bass (so open, deep and powerful), possibly rolled-off on top. Of course that lasted about fifteen minutes and the sound started to change becoming thin and congested in the mids, getting some high-end extension and losing some of its bass extension. Over the next hour it kept on changing. So no miracles here folks - the same old burn-in stuff. So it was then decision time. Do I make up the speaker cables and let it all run in, or do I wait to see how the interconnects mature? You guessed it, I made up the speaker cables. On first listen to them the mids and highs became more open but the whole bass region was pretty awful. An hour later the sound was improving but not yet good. Oh well, I shall have to be patient.
Interestingly the sound was nothing like CAT5 conductors, which are the same solid core conductor guage, but with a much thinner teflon insulator. The grade of copper and teflon is also different of course.
Ken, I am interested in how you have configured the cables. At first I just ran the conductors separately, and then twisted them together to see what effect it had. The sound was more open, more focussed and more coherent when the conductors were twisted together. But at this very early stage it is difficult to determine how they might change in sound. And from experience flexing the cable (whether twisting or untwisting) tends to cause any cable to go through a burn-in cycle, so it is always going to be difficult to figure out the best configuration by just listening. By the way my Martin Logans definitely prefer being bi-wired, so I am running shotgun (or should that be double pea-shooter) bi-wire speaker cables. I am expecting that twisting will be a good idea for cancelling interference. I was somewhat disappointed that the manual from Sakura Systems makes no mention of this at all.
I cannot help being reminded of the Jimmy Hughes fad for thin solid core cables many years ago. I experimented with various guages and mixtures of guages and settled on 0.6mm as the ideal. It is interesting that this stuff is thinner than that. By recollection, the thinner guage tended to be very fast on top, very focussed but slightly thin in the mids, and tight, articulate and dry in the bass - in comparison with 0.6mm.
From your post Ken it will be some time before I will be able to post any conclusions. Are you able to post a description of the interconnect and speaker cables as separate items? I must admit the sound so far indicates a lot of promise, but with some question marks over the cable between my valve monos and the woofers on the Logans - but clearly too early to tell yet. |
Yes Ken, when I tried the solid core stuff years ago, each thickness seemed to have its sweet-spot, with 0.6mm having it smack in the mid-range, rolled-off top and bottom, very smooth but lacking fine detail resolution. So far these cables don't sound like that at all. Tight and analytical is certainly the direction that twisting tended to take the sound. I judged that beneficial at the time because it was sounding vague and dark. But I will take your advice and separate them again. I just listened to an album where for the first few tracks the voices sounded high and not fleshed out, but by the end of the album they were sounding wonderfully rich and full. I am just going to have to be patient, but so far experience tells me there is a good cable trying to come out.
I have emailed Yoshi on the twisting question and will report back if I get a reply. |
The cables have gone through some interesting changes. But at all times there has been excellent PRAT, a grainless smoothness and minimal smearing - each parameter being significantly better than with any stranded cable I have heard. The lack of smearing means transients are not accompanied by any noticeable distortion, the soundstage is fab (and very deep), and fine detail resolution is excellent. All this is not exceptional because many solid core cables I have heard have had these qualities to some degree, but fell down in really only getting a narrow band of frequencies right. The problems I have encountered have been with tonal anomolies and an occasional swimmy vagueness. But these problems only last an hour or so and then are replaced by another.
My assumption is that all the good points will remain intact and the problems are just burn-in issues. I just have to be patient enough to wait for that to happen. Most of the time the mid-band is pretty good (except when the lower-mids occasionally disappear. The biggest changes are in the bass and treble where they are occasionally good to very good, and then do a disappearing act.
Something about the sound of these cables make me very optimistic. |
Kimosabe, the bass has arrived. Still a little rubbery at the very bottom, but strong, powerful, fast and extended - better through the upper bass and mid-bass than either my Siltech or Wireworld. The PRAT is outstanding. The vibrance of the sound with these cables has no nasty edges, just that silky presence you get from a great MC cartridge, making some previously difficult CDs sound very good. The sound is still changing slightly, oscillating between the slightly warm and slightly lean, and the bass continues to improve, but I am officially excited now.
I cannot quite comprehend how such a thin and simple cable could be giving so much more than all those other cables I have or have had. These cables give you none of that pride of ownership you get from the high-end looks of the expensive stuff. As Ken says, it looks like you have your gear connected by some nylon weed-wacker cord. My wife accepts them as not being "totally destructive of the room's ambience" - I think she is reluctantly admitting she likes how the system fills the room with music like never before.
When I am more satisfied the sound has stabilised I will describe all the goodies about this cable's sound. Shame about the very painful burn-in phase. Who ever says burn-in is a myth is just plain ignorant. |
Just a comment on what I term smearing. If smearing of sounds occurs due to cables then it tends to happen to all sounds (as opposed to vibration which tends to just affect one narrow band).
The effect it has on all sounds is to obscure the fine detail, but accentuate transients by making them last longer. So the cymbals spit, voices are overcome by sibilance and go hard when they are pushed hard by the singer, and the bass seems nicely weighty but lacking articulation and seemingly behind the beat. If you approach these effects thinking they are merely an issue of tonality you will be wanting to tighten up the bass, but smooth the upper frequencies. A warmer cable or component may tame the harshness of upper frequencies, but the bass gets worse. A leaner cable or component gets you more articulation in the bass but the upper frequencies get harder. Sound familiar at all?
Solid core cables tend to be better at avoiding smearing, and the sound is smooth and grainless, with black silent backgrounds. You don't get that crispy crunchy sound accompanying the transient (which I think is what Dekay is describing) that comes from smearing the initial attack. So instruments like classical guitar can sound wonderfully natural with solid core cables. But finding one that performs well over the full frequency range has always eluded me. It is too early for me to tell whether the 47Labs Kit is the exception, but Ken (Caterham1700) reports that it is, and so far the 47Labs sounds more promising than any other solid core cable I have tried.
The most interesting part to me is the fantastic PRAT that is emerging from this cable. I reckon PRAT comes from minimising smearing, so that the listener perceives the transients to be happening at the correct time, thereby perceiving the band to be playing "in the groove" together. That should suggest that all solid core cables have good PRAT, but not so, which comes down to the fact they tend to only work well over a narrow band. But this time the speed of this cable has a coherence top-to-bottom that I cannot recall hearing in my system before.
All of that makes me think I should have tried some Tara Labs cables before now. I would be very interested to hear from some Tara owners on this one. |
Hi Dekay. I am using the 47Labs for interconnect and speaker cables. I couldn't stand the idea of running them in separately either. I no longer use any digital interconnects and only need a stereo pair of ICs and a stereo pair of speaker cables in either of my systems. I have not used solid core cables for a while, except that the cables I have been using each use several or many solid cores separately insulated. Given I am getting quite excited by these 47Labs cables I feel I need a reality check with a good solid core cable in case it is just my system context that is causing me to like single solid core cables now, when I did not before.
The impact of twisting the cables is an interesting point. I first ran them untwisted, and the sound was a bit vague, so I twisted them together loosely and the sound tightened up a bit. Later the system was sounding a bit thinned and congested and flattened, and so following Ken's advice I untwisted them again and the sound was better. It is hard to know where the sound of these cables will end up but I feel untwisted is probably going to be better. Very hard to know since moving the cables results in more burn-in.
I emailed Yoshi of Sakura Systems on the twisting issue but his reply was non-committal.
By the way, I didn't have any of the problems you encountered with threading the cables into the ground connectors - which is a little bit odd because we must have ordered the cables at about the same time. I just held my mouth right and gave the cable a shove and it went in. |
Well blow the feathers off m'Kiwi and call it a Wallaby! Listening to the system the last fewdays has been like watching a new flower open up to the sunshine. There have been times when I have been close to ditching these cables and going back to my Coincident and Wireworlds for some decent sound. But in the last four days the sound has been circling 'round perfection in the mids and tops, and in the last day they have been zeroing in. The last day the cavalry has begun to emerge on the horizon - we now have some decent bass emerging! I got so excited I just had to take a reality check and put the Coincident ICs back in place (which had been kept percolating on another system), and.... YUCK! The 47 Labs is so much more vibrant, resolving, natural...
I reckon these cables are getting near to reasonably run in at last. I will come back when I am more sure that the sound has stabilised. But I don't feel nearly so stupid now. |
Slawney. I happen to agree with your comment about the Coincident cables. They are still very good indeed for the price and I have a friend who is desperately waiting for me to sell mine because he likes them so much (I lent them to him for two weeks in place of his Kimbers, then took them back and it was hard to get away). |
Sorry Slawney i didn't answer your question. I only have them as ICs and speaker cable at present. |
I'm sold now. I will be brief.
The sound is vibrant (perhaps forward) in that instead of images flattened behind the speakers, the room is now full of music. None of this is accompanied by any nasty sounds except those obviously present in the recording.
I can hear every tiny detail of transients like cymbals, bells, rim-shots etc. The speed is stunning and the timing is so coherent top to bottom that the music just takes over from the sound. What a treat to be not fretting about the sound of the system and just boogying to the music.
Incredibly, these feeble looking cables make it sound like I have 1300w monos, not 130w monos. The music just breathes, shimmers and shakes.
No congestion, some vestiges only of unwanted warmth (still diminishing as the cables continue to burn in). Otherwise incredibly neutral. Several CDs that were just too aggressive to listen to are now wonderously rich sounding. Some CDs that were muted and a bit lifeless are now brought to life.
I know unqualified raves are not well received here. So I will leave it at this. If you get hung up on the difference between price and the intrinsic value of the materials (as many here seem to do with cables) then forget these cables. If you are mad enough, like me, to lay out USD600 for cables on a chance - then I reckon the odds are high that you will not regret it, provided you have the patience to let them burn-in. If you don't believe in burn-in you will throw these cables away in the first week - just remember to throw them in my direction. If you think these cables cannot be great because they cost ONLY USD600, then you should think again. If you want to spend less than USD600 then work something out with a friend, because the kit gives you 50m of conductor (or 12.5m of stereo pair) and 12 RCA connectors, and you can buy extra connectors and/or cable. I'm stupid enough to be considering buying a second kit so I will have plenty to be able to make cables up in the future as my system changes. My Coincident, Cardas, Wireworld and Siltech cables are not going back in the system. |
Welcome to the lunatic fringe Brulee, me ol' mate. |
Hi Slawney. Your 50 times more expensive cables may well be considerably better because I am damn sure I haven't heard anything at that price. That must be round about New Zealand's GDP??
Actually, since my last post the sound went a bit flat for a day or so and is now 90% back to its best and seeming to improve by the minute. I got them about 21 May - and I listen about three hours a day, and my wife plays the system around two hours a day. In addition I have run the interconnects over night at high volume with a burn-in disc a few times. Not so with the speaker cables due to the need to sleep.
So the ICs are probably the equivalent of 200 hours, and the speaker cables only 100 hours. So when I look at it like that the cables are probably going to change some more for a while. Maybe I am being somewhat premature here. But the brilliant rendition of transients has been almost always present with these cables - and when they are not off on a tonal detour, the wonderful microdynamics result in the vibrant room-filling sound you and I have referred to. |
Apart from the upper bass just plain disappearing for a few hours on Saturday, the sound has been very stable since my last post 5 days ago. It is only in the bass where I have had reservations with this cable - during burn-in, the bass has gone just about everywhere except to the target.
I can relate to your comments Dekay - these cables seem to make the system more sensitive to being played at just the right volume. They are not at all bright or aggressive. At low volumes and with relatively bass-less material they do sound bass-light compared with the speaker cables that lurk in my cupboard.
But turn the sound up to reasonable levels and any bass that is in the recording is super-fast and very solid with no bloat or overhang, and there is NO sense of being bass-light at all. I suspect it is just very accurate but perhaps may not be to everyone's taste. With some of my Charlie Haden CDs his bass breathes wonderfully. |
Kitch29, I suspect it would destroy the coherence of the pacing. I am getting very boring on PRAT I know, but happen to believe that many audiophiles get lost in failing to distinguish between the sound and the music, and that this is the reason why so many keep getting dissatisfied with their systems soon after being blown away by the last change they made.
I am also getting boring on reporting changes in the sound, but yesterday and today there was a surprising (to me)change that stripped the unwanted warmth I have referred to before out of the picture altogether, and the bass came up into better balance at low volumes - I have no idea whether this will continue.
To be honest, almost regardless of how these cables end up sounding in a tonal sense, I am going to find it difficult to go back to anything else, because the PRAT is outstanding, and what is keeping me enthused through a sometimes ugly burn-in process. |
Kitch29 - I will eat my hat now because I think you are right. I took the OTA speaker cables out and put in my Wireworld Golden Eclipse III cables and something sounded more right about the whole thing. Listening some more I was not happy with the smearing I was now hearing from my panels (I drive Martin Logans with tubes), but the powerful bass of the OTA interconnects was great to hear. The OTA as an IC works very well in my system. The bass may be a wee bit dry, but otherwise is very powerful and tight, and goes way down. Bothered by the reduction in resolution up top I put the OTA back on the panels but left the Wireworld on the bass, and then for another permutation used a double run of the Wireworld on the bass (which improved things in a variety of ways including eliminating the dryness). It is clear to me now that the OTA as a speaker cable between my tube amps and the woofers was strangling things. I will have to listen to this some more, but there is no loss of pacing as I had feared. What is odd is that the panels sound better now than when I had the OTA on the bass. This suggests to me my tube amps were just not liking something about the OTA speaker cable on the bass and its performance in the upper frequencies was being affected.
Boy, does the system boogie now. |
Just digital sources, but otherwise correct Gregm.
From what I can tell, some of the other guys trying this cable (but who are wisely keeping their powder dry) are liking it but not necessarily getting the same results. I find as an interconnect the OTA is vivid, fast punchy, even forward, with room-filling sound, but possibly slightly recessed on top. In particular the bass is stunning - incredibly fast, firm and extended - maybe a bit dry. On the panels of my MLs the sound is wonderfully resolved and vibrant. No other speaker cable I have gets even close to resolving cymbals and sibilance, and having it on the panels cures the sense of reticence on top. But with the OTA on the woofer of my MLs there is good and bad. The bass is fast - drums in particular are very life-like (I suspect because it handles transients so well), but other bass sounds can be a bit uneven. I don't think this is a burn-in issue but it might be. Therefore I am taking the OTA woofer cables off my system and putting it on my daughters' system, and I will just leave it there for a month before retrying it. Right now the results with garden hose on the woofers sounds better - interestingly, in the upper mids and lower treble as well. |
OK Ken (as Mr Webb said), but I will have another go when the speaker cables have had more hours, because the bass performance was definitely still moving around. |
Very interesting Kitch. I don't know anything about the Mapleshade cables so would be interested in a description. With the OTA the most significant "sound" improvement is with cymbals - no spit or smearing - every little detail seems so like the real thing it is amazing. My speaker cables to my woofers are percolating away on my older daughter's system - she gives them a decent work-out, but her room is sufficiently distant for me to be able to run a burn-in disc while she is at school, so I reckon they will be ready to re-audition soon. But in general I love the way the OTAs do not smear or emphasize anything and the music comes alive in a very natural way. |
I largely agree with Dekay's findings, but came off using Coincident ICs and Wireworld Gold Eclipse speaker cables. I have other cables from Kimber, XLO, Siltech and Straightwire (probably some others lurking in the cupboard I have forgotten too). All of them sound as if they have additive distortions compared with the OTA. I endorse all of the positives Dekay has referred to, particularly how the soundstage floats free in the room, and the utterly natural treatment of percussion (nothing else come close). The negatives I note are a certain vagueness to images, that still comes and goes, and the burn-in being prolonged and odd-sounding with the speaker cables between my valve amps and the woofers on my Martin Logans. I have been burning in the woofer cables on my daughter's system and will re-insert them in mine this weekend. It will no doubt take up to a week for them to stabilise again, so will try to remain quiet till then (unlikely, I admit). |
Try twisting them lightly Dekay. I find that untwisted, they sound a bit like the Magnan cables, albeit with much better PRAT than the Magnans. I think my cables are pretty much run in now, and I found that images were a bit "wafty" as a friend of mine puts it. Not quite "there". Till I tried a light twist, and images becaome more solid, giving me the same solidity as I get with my other cables, but with all the PRAT, clean transients, expanded soundstage and lack of grain still intact. |
My OTA cables are now back on the woofers after burn-in, and settled down, and I take back any of my previous reservations. The sound is much better than garden hose on the woofers and OTA on the electrostatic. The garden hose sounds ponderous and noisy by comparison. Don't know why, but they took much longer to burn in than the others. |
Dekay, to answer your previous question, my beach house is undergoing work at present and so the system is stored (too cold here right now to crave the beach anyway). Well-spotted, it would have been an ideal way to run in the OTA cable. When I set it up again it will probably soak up all the remainder of my OTA kit, so I am thinking about getting another one. |
Hi Dekay
I have been playing with some Daruma Bearings recently and found that they did a wonderful job between CD player and the Neuance shelf (whereas no other hard device did previously, except perhaps the Super DH Cones). Using the Darumas the best sound occurred with the OTA untwisted.
Ken once suggested to me that the vibration control needs of CD transports differ depending on the construction of the transport and that this varied from one to another.
So I am now listening to what seems to me like the best of both worlds - the openness of the OTA untwisted, but improved solidity and clarity of images due to the Darumas (the waftiness has gone).
One of the imaging issues with the OTA cable is that the soundstage expands so much that some listeners may feel a need to sit further away from the speakers. With the OTA cables you are drawn far more into the soundstage itself, a bit more like listening to giant headphones. I happen to think it is just more natural that way. While images seem more precisely defined laterally with my other cables, it also seems like the images are flattened cardboard cut-outs compared with the presentation from the OTA cable. |
Megasam, I tried the home-made variety (three different designs) and concluded that the bearings worked well under CDP but not my tube power amps. Then I got the Darumas and was blown away - different league from the home-made ones and so am happy to re-visit the tube amps. So now I am thinking of getting one set of Aurios for CDP and another set of Darumas - the two sets of Darumas either going under tube monoblocks or under speakers (either way the weight is not extreme). Any ideas?
Sorry for temporarily hi-jacking this thread. |
Just to throw another spanner in the works!
I had more OTA than I needed so I built a set of cables using three lengths pos and three lengths neg on the bass, and two lengths pos and two lengths neg on the panels (of my Martin-Logans) to see what multiple lengths would sound like - and being very careful that all lengths were identical.
Not fully run-in yet, but it is an interesting alternative. I find there is more ease, the sound is perhaps fuller and richer, and no obvious backward step in what the OTA was already good at - but that last observation will have to wait till it is fully run-in. Good as the OTA is, it may be that the multiple lengths will improve things through offering less resistance. But I am mindful of the impact on inductance and capacitance so am routing the cables carefully. |
Hi Sead
Methinks you are right about it being mellower - but that is not what I heard initially. I have kept quiet while waiting for the break-in to occur. After break-in, the sound of the system was very laid-back using the multiple runs, and failed to get the attack of notes right. Possibly the bass flowed and breathed a bit better, but overall the single run is better. |
I have not come across a cable that gets the start, body and decay of musical events so exquisitely right as the OTA cable. It is this kind of immediacy and natural energy that is so obviously present in live music and that yet so few systems come close to emulating. Much as I enjoyed and admire Slawney's post, and thanks Slawney for improving on the attempts here to describe the OTA, the difference (for me) is simple - other cables I have tried seem to swap one "sound" for another, whereas the OTA seems to allow the music to overcome the issues of "sound". I am not saying that the OTA is perfect, but I fear we audiophilanderers are often seduced by the superficial beauty of sound, when what's good for us is to be faithfully wedded to just the music. The OTA is an important step in that direction and one that no other cable I have heard comes close to.
I must apologise for my rambling and roundabout attempts to pin this cable down. I just cannot help playing with it to see what different configurations sound like (and I have tried several that I have not reported on here). And I have probably reported on more dead-ends here than successes, but I am just excited by this cable, and I get an overwhelming need to share my enthusiasm.
As to the burn-in issue, Ken is right, I have been trying different configurations and burning in new cable each time. Now you know I'm crazy. |
I agree with the post - several posts back - about not twisting the cable. The sonic result is awful.
However, one configuration that sounded very good to me was;
- get a length of plastic rod or tube with good dialectric qualities and good flexibility - usually a foam rod is best
- wrap one conductor around the rod, from end-to-end, circling the rod once every six inches or so.
- do the same with a second conductor but wrap it counter to the first one, so that it is therefore crossing the first one twice every six inches.
I suppose in theory this configuration has lowish capacitance, and lower inductance than letting the cable fall chaotically on the floor (the approved method). Whatever, the result sounds cleaner to me. Certainly, I prefer the physical result too.
Don't ask me where I got the central foam rod - I took it out of the center of some Straightwire speaker cable I didn't mind butchering. |
I have found OTA cables to be as quiet or more quiet than shielded cables. I also found them merely promising early on, but am surprised you are not noticing the superior pacing of the OTA as this is present throughout burn in. I certainly found them superior to SPM, but have not tried FIM Gold. If you remain unimpressed, I suggest you put your old interconnects back in first. The OTA as a speaker cable is much more difficult to beat. |
